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Norwegian rescuers find one body from Russian helicopter crashing off Spitsbergen

A Russian helicopter with eight people on board has crashed off the island of Spitsbergen

© Natalya Dmitrak/TASS

MOSCOW, October 30. /TASS/. The body of a crew member from the Russian Mi-8 helicopter that crashed into the Arctic Ocean off Spitsbergen last Thursday has been found by Norwegian rescuers some 130 meters off the crash site, Svalbard governor Kjerstin Askholt said on Monday.

According to Askholt, the body was found by a submersible vehicle on the seabed 130 meters of the site of sinking. The body will be lifted within hours.

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Bad weather complicates search for Russian helicopter missing off Spitzbergen coast

Several teams of Russian rescuers were dispatched to the crash zone on Monday, they have returned to Longyearbyen with no result. Four groups of rescuers assisted by officers of the International Committee of the Red Cross examined 22 kilometers of the coastline, finding no objects that could be connected with the helicopter.

Earlier on Monday, Russian Minister for Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov ordered to continue the search. "I ask you to solve all emerging problems jointly with Norwegian colleagues, we continue the search operation," the minister said.

A helicopter of the Conversavia airline, carrying eight people, was en route from the mothballed community of Pyramiden to Barentsburg when contact with the aircraft was lost at 15:04 local time (16:04 Moscow time) on Thursday. There were five crew and three employees of the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute on board the helicopter.

It was in a proper technical condition and underwent maintenance before the flight, Conversavia said. On Sunday, more than 40 Russian rescuers joined the search for the helicopter. It was traced at a depth of 209 meters in the Barents Sea some two kilometers off Cape Heer.

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